Pasta With Pan-fried Squash, Walnut And Parsley Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 150g fresh walnut halves
- 2-3 fat garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
- 5 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon walnut oil
- 5 tablespoons double cream or creme fraiche
- 2 tablespoons chopped flat leaf parsley
- 650g prepared squash, cut into 1-cm thick slices or chunks
- 1-2 pinches dried chilli flakes, crushed
- 400 g dried pasta of your choice
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- freshly grated Parmesan, to serve
- freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste
- freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
Instructions
- #This is a lovely and unusual butternut squash pasta recipe, well suited to autumn, when walnuts and all kinds of orange-fleshed squashes are at their best. In northern Italy, a version of this walnut pasta sauce is traditionally served with pappardelle pasta, but it is good with other shapes too, including, strange as it may seem (and distinctly unltalian), wholemeal spaghetti.# Preheat the oven to 180°C (350 °F) Gas 4.
- Put the walnuts on a baking tray and toast them in the preheated oven for 5-6 minutes, making sure they don’t burn. Turn them onto a dry, clean tea towel and rub vigorously to remove as much of the skin as possible. Chop 50 g of the nuts roughly and set aside.
- Put the remaining 100 g in a food processor. Blanch the garlic in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, drain and rinse. Put the garlic in the processor with the walnuts, add 2 tablespoons olive oil, the walnut oil and cream. Whizz to make a paste. Set aside a third of the parsley, then whizz the remaining two-thirds into the sauce. Chop the reserved parsley and set aside, along with the sauce.
- In a large frying pan, heat the remaining oil over medium heat, add the squash and chilli flakes and cook, turning the squash now and then, until it is tender and lightly browned, about 10-12 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, or according to the instructions on the packet.
- When the pasta is cooked, drain, reserving 4-5 tablespoons of the cooking water. Add enough of this water into the sauce to make it creamy, then season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. Toss the pasta with the squash, remaining walnuts and parsley and a little of the sauce. Serve the Parmesan and remaining sauce at the table. To Serve: